John Foxe

John Foxe was born in Boston, Lincolnshire, in 1516 or 1517,, and was a studious and devout boy. At Oxford he became a fellow of Magdalen College, read the church fathers and learned Hebrew. After he became a Protestant he resigned from his college in 1545 and worked as a tutor. In 1547 he married Agnes Randall; they had six children. When the Catholic Queen Mary I came to the throne in 1553, Protestants faced arrest and execution, and Foxe escaped with his wife to the Continent just ahead of the officers sent to arrest him. Living very poorly in Strasbourg, Frankfurt and Basel, he gathered accounts of Christians who had suffered for their faith. After Elizabeth I became queen he returned to England, and in 1563 the printer John Day published his huge Actes and Monuments, an account of martyrs from the early church to his own day. Friends found him a man of unworldly nature who would not use his powerful friendships to advance himself. He died in London in 1587.

John Foxe is also an author in the library: author page and works.

Faith: English Protestant clergyman whose Book of Martyrs recounted the Protestant martyrs of his century. Source: Dictionary of National Biography (1885–1900) (via Wikisource)

See also: Thomas Cranmer · Hugh Latimer · Elizabeth I